Public Opinion,National Integration and National Identity in Spain: The Case of the Barcelona Olympic Games

Abstract. This article analyses the impact of the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games on national integration and national identity in Spain with respect to the conflict of interests that developed around the Games between the centre and Catalonia. We argue that polarisation along nationalist lines was limited in large part because national identity in Spain today is not predominantly a unitary and exclusive entity. Dual identity, loyalty to both Spain, on the one hand, and to one's region, or nation as in the case of Catalonia, on the other, and inclusive nationalism that does not aim at complete national independence, increasingly have tended to predominate in the last decade and a half. The Olympics, then, not only polarised relations between Catalonia and Spain, they also served to accommodate antagonisms between them and thus to maintain a delicate, fragile balance of power in the new España de las autonomías.